Conglomerate Ayala Corp. said Thursday net income climbed 20 percent in 2015 to P22.3 billion from a year ago, lifted by the solid performance of real estate, telecommunications and power generation units.
Ayala’s 2015 profit exceeded the company’s P20-billion income target.
Ayala said in a disclosure to the stock exchange it earmarked P174 billion in capital expenditures for 2016, primarily to support the growth of real estate and telecom businesses.
It said minus the capital gains from the partial sale of AC Energy’s stake in North Luzon Renewable Energy Corp. in 2015 and the divestment from Stream Global Services in the previous year, net earnings grew 24 percent year-on-year.
Equity earnings contribution from business units Ayala Land Inc., Globe Telecom Inc., Bank of the Philippine Islands and Manila Water Co. Inc. reached P28 billion in 2015, up 13 percent from 2014.
Consolidated revenues, including the combined revenues of subsidiaries and share in earnings from associates, surpassed the P200 billion-mark, increasing by 11 percent from a year ago.
“We achieved a number of milestones as a group in the past year, with most of our major businesses continuing to perform well. In 2015, we strengthened our growing portfolio of power and infrastructure investments, with various projects coming to fruition,” Ayala Corp. president and chief operating officer Fernando Zobel de Ayala said.
Zobel said the group entered the healthcare space in 2015, with the acquisition of a 50-percent interest in pharmaceutical chain Generika. It also deepened its presence in education via Apec Schools, a fast-growing chain of low-cost private secondary schools it co-owned with UK-based Pearson Plc.
The conglomerate also continues to invest in power and infrastructure sectors.
Unit AC Energy currently has an attributable capacity of 600 megawatts in its portfolio of conventional and renewable power projects which are currently in operations and under construction.
Infrastructure unit AC Infrastructure Holdings, through Light Rail Manila Corp., successfully took over the operations of the Light Rail Transit Line 1 in September 2015 and increased the number of operational light rail vehicles by 15 percent.
AC Infra’s Muntinlupa Cavite Expressway also started operations in July and is currently serving over 22,000 vehicles a day.
Ayala Corp. ended the year with gross debt of ₱93.6 billion, or 7 percent lower than the previous year’s.